E-Commerce Holiday Battle Plans

At Ritz Interactive, every staff member was put on call as of the second week in November. "They have pagers. That extends to customer service, engineering, almost everyone," CEO Fred Lerner told the E-Commerce Times. "If there's a blip, we'll be able to get instant response."

The weather outside may be frightful, but the potential for revenue is
delightful. True, rewriting a holiday song so it fits e-commerce may take away some of the lyrical charm, but for e-tailers, it still captures the spirit of the season.

As the holiday period approaches, e-commerce players are gearing up for the
online buying rush. Many analysts predict this will be the best year yet in
terms of site visits and sales.

What are companies doing to ensure the season proceeds as smoothly
as possible?

Finally, Some Wisdom

After years of tinkering with server capacity, site design, product selection, customer service and fulfillment, e-commerce sites seem to have reached the point of being able not only to develop solid holiday plans, but also to tie promotions effectively to the season.

"There's an incredible amount of seasonality in e-commerce, just as there is
in all retail," IDC analyst Jonathan Gaw told the E-Commerce Times. "Everyone knows this, so they've learned how to handle it."

P.K. Van Deloo, brand manager for Yahoo Shopping, told the E-Commerce Times that the site identifies buying trends months before the holiday season arrives, then uses that insight when developing online promotions.

For example, digital cameras are hot right now, so Yahoo has created a
special section on the shopping portion of its site to provide better
comparisons of different digital cameras. It has done the same for
other kinds of gift items, such as toys and MP3 players.

"We've always had a lot of resources devoted to peak periods like the
holidays," Van Deloo said. "Now, we have a better idea about what people
want and how to get it for them."

Serving It Up

Another thing sites have learned is that they need plenty of server capacity
to handle holiday traffic. Many sites have examined the experiences of past
buying seasons and ramped up where needed.

Smaller e-commerce sites often can get help with this task from their ISPs.
Christopher Faulkner, CEO of hosting provider C I Host, told the E-Commerce Times that during the holiday season, a 35 percent increase in Web traffic is not unusual.

To help its customers, C I Host offers temporary load balancing
services and additional servers that can be returned when sales slow
down after the holidays. In fact, the company has put together a package
specifically for this time of year.

"About two years ago we started offering holiday hosting, and it became
popular very quickly," Faulkner said. "It's a temporary solution that the
customer can get rid of in January."

Big Guns Ready

At larger e-commerce firms, lessons learned in previous years also have changed
today's battle plans. For example, at Ritz Interactive, which runs a bevy of online
stores like RitzCamera.com and RitzElectronics, the company increased the capacity
of its servers by altering their configurations.

Fred Lerner, Ritz Interactive president and CEO, told the E-Commerce Times that last year the company used a combination of application servers and Web servers. "This year, we split them up to give us additional redundancy," he said.

Other high-traffic sites have chosen to tackle the holiday spike by gradually
building up capacity during the year. As Larissa Hall, vice president of Buy.com, told the E-Commerce Times: "Our site was built with scalability in mind.... There's been an ongoing effort to invest in our technology to be sure we're ready for the holidays."

Hire Learning

Just as companies take on extra server capacity, they also tend to take on
more staffers, at least temporarily. However, some e-commerce companies that
want to keep budgets under control have implemented more inventive staffing
procedures.

At Ritz Interactive, for example, every staff member was put on call as of
the second week in November.

"Many people are now on a 24/7 schedule," Lerner said. "They have pagers. That
extends to customer service, engineering, almost everyone. Hopefully, every
one of the staff will get a very good night's sleep. However, if there's a
blip, we'll be able to get instant response."

Ritz uses a notification system that sends a pager message, an e-mail
and a cell phone message to relevant staffers. "Instead of a rotating
schedule, our entire staff is hardwired," Lerner said.

In contrast, some e-commerce companies have decided to beef up only in certain
staffing areas. Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com, told the E-Commerce Times that his company focuses heavily on getting its customer service and fulfillment operations just right.

With strong infrastructures and established battle plans, it seems
as if most e-commerce sites are ready for the holiday deluge. But how will
they lure customers to ensure the planned traffic volume materializes?